“He must be in Cuba by now.”
“I wonder what a Jewish-Hungarian-Cuban would be like,” she said.
“A Jewish-Hungarian-Hairy-Ainu-of-Japan would be better,” Douglas said. “Then there’d be no need for gum-arabic.”
“What a splendid idea—shall we send him a cable about it?”
“He might take it seriously,” Douglas said. “Think of all the hair there’d be in the next generation. People would be committing suicide all over the shop.”
Judy ate very little supper. She left the food on the side of her plate without saying anything. After supper they drove back to her flat, and Douglas went up for coffee. Judy said she would only be a short time making the coffee and disappeared into the kitchen. Presently he followed her but she kept her back towards him, arranging the cups. He told her the kettle was boiling. She turned round.
“It’s no good, you’ll have to see. I’ve made an awful mess of my face.” She had been crying, but now she was smiling through the tears which were still in her eyes. “I was perfectly all right until we got up here. Then I saw a cigarette that he’d squashed out in the ash-tray. Isn’t it silly? I was only crying about the cigarette.”
“He’ll pop up one day and squash out some more.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Louis will always pop up.”
“No.” She shook her head positively. “I’ve told him I won’t see him again. He knows I mean it.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes; it’s stupid to go on like this. I’ve absolutely made up my mind. He’s not even going to write. I shall tear up his letters if he does.” The tears were still coming up in her eyes. She brushed them away, laughing. “I’ll make the coffee now.”
“I don’t really want any coffee.”
“Don’t you? It’s an awful nuisance—and I can’t see properly.”
“I’ll go,” he said.
“You’d better. Otherwise I shall keep on doing that. You’ve been so damned nice—that’s partly what makes me cry. I don’t know what I’d have done today if you hadn’t been here.”
“To talk rubbish with.”
“The rubbish saved me. I’ll be all right now when you’ve gone.”
“Shall I take away the cigarette?”
“No, just let me have it for tonight. I’ll throw it away in the morning.”
“We could embalm it.”
“We’re not going to embalm anything,” she said. “It’s all finished in the morning. I’ve got to be at the airport at eight. I’m going to the Bahamas.”
“For long?”
“Oh I’ll be back in the evening.”
“I’ll wave to you as you go over the school,” he said.
“I’ll be waving, too.”
That night when he arrived back at his bungalow there was a letter on his desk from Caroline. It was no strain to delay opening it, he even felt reluctant to do so, but he opened it eventually, and it said that she was back in London and was going to marry Alec. Alec was the man he had once caught in his own dressing-gown, in a scene straight from a French farce, and who had described him as having Midland morals—whatever they were. He forgot about the letter at once.
As he got into bed, he noticed some flowers on the table. He knew they were not from Mrs. Pawley, not only because Mrs. Pawley’s flower-giving period was over, but also because they were wild flowers and arranged in a jam-jar instead of a vase. He thought that perhaps Ivy had put them there, as a gesture of apology for her often misplaced mirth.
In the morning, when she woke him with her “Yes please, Mr. Lockwood,” he asked her about them, and she began to giggle helplessly. In anyone else the giggles might have expressed some knowledge or complicity but in Ivy they meant only that she didn’t know. It then occurred to him that it might be Silvia. He met Silvia coming out of breakfast, and some half-embarassed expectancy in her manner made him sure he was right. But she didn’t mention the flowers, and he didn’t either. He had no wish to encourage her to do it again, and it seemed safest to pretend that he hadn’t guessed.
Chapter Twelve
The Morgan-Duffield feud had now continued without interruption for over two months. That week there was a reconciliation, brought about by the agency of rum. The reconciliation was brief, and rum was also the agency of its collapse.
The idea for the reconciliation was Pawley’s. He had hoped at the same time to create an opportunity for his wife and Douglas to settle their differences over the nature of which he professed himself puzzled. Pawley liked to picture himself as the benign patriarch of a happy and co-operative team, and he was deeply sorrowed by the simultaneous existence of two feuds in a staff of only six. He wondered self-effacingly if they didn’t reflect in some way on his own leadership.
His idea was to throw a jolly little staff party at his own bungalow. He explained to Douglas rather nervously that he had not yet put the suggestion to his wife, but that he felt sure he could count on her support. The party took place, but judging by Mrs. Pawley’s sullen and brief attendance, her support had not been readily forthcoming.
It was on Saturday night after supper. Douglas walked down from the Great House with Duffield, and the Morgans turned up ten minutes later. They sat out on the verandah. The wicker chairs were arranged in a semicircle round a small table, on which stood three bottles of rum. Pawley was behaving in a jolly manner that gave the impression of long practice in front of a mirror. He himself was teetotal like Morgan, but he dispensed generous portions of rum to Mrs. Morgan and Douglas.
When Mrs. Pawley came out there was only one vacant chair. It was next to Douglas. She hesitated, and then sat down decidedly and turned her head away from him as if she was unaware of his presence. Douglas would have welcomed a reconciliation even more than Pawley, and it seemed up to him to make the first move. He made some comment about the rum being a particularly excellent brand.
“Really?” Mrs. Pawley said frigidly. She only turned her head a fraction of an inch to say it.
He said, “I’m afraid you’re still annoyed with me about that night, Mrs. Pawley.”
“What night?” she snapped.
“The night at your brother’s. I behaved rather badly.”
“Did you?” she said.
“I should have taken more care when you were getting out of the car. But it was entirely an accident—I let in the clutch before I saw you were opening the door again.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” she said, still snapping.
“I imagined that was why you hadn’t talked to me since.”
She turned to him and said, “You’re very conceited, aren’t you?” He didn’t quite see the point of that remark, but before he had time to make any comment she turned to her husband on the other side and said, “Leonard, would you put some more ginger in my rum?” A short while later, leaving her glass half full, she announced that she had a headache and left the jolly little staff party to be jolly without her. That was as far as the reconciliation went.
The other reconciliation had been faring much better. Douglas now saw that Mrs. Morgan was not only listening to a joke that Duffield was telling her, but was actually giggling at it. She was giggling in a way in which she only giggled after she had drunk a good deal of rum—she had probably treated herself to two or three thimblefuls before coming down to the party. Mrs. Morgan was a good-natured person, deep animosities found no place in her abundant rolls of fat, and it was only out of loyal respect for her husband’s animosities that she had managed to keep up her end of the feud at all. Now her loyalty had evidently been weakened by the alcohol. When Duffield reached the climax of his joke, she shook in her chair with so much amusement that the rum spilt over the sides of her glass on to her lap.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” she said. “That’s really a good one, Mr. Duffield. Do tell us anothe
r.”
Duffield had also drunk more rum than he was accustomed to drink, and was looking extremely pleased with himself. He liked an appreciative audience at any time, and now he regarded the capture of Mrs. Morgan’s attention as a victory over Morgan. He told another one. It was the old music-hall joke about the man who was asked about the lady he had been out with, and he said that was no lady, that was his wife. Mrs. Morgan spilt some more rum on to her lap.
“Oh dear, you’re a scream, Mr. Duffield you really are a scream!” She had forgotten that a feud had ever existed. She turned merrily to her husband, “Did you hear that one? It was a scream, wasn’t it? You ought to tell Mr. Duffield that joke about the nigger cutting down bananas.”
Morgan looked embarrassed. The use of the word “nigger” reminded him of the origin of his feud with Duffield, of which he needed no reminding. He said sulkily:
“I don’t know any jokes.”
“Oh, you do,” Mrs. Morgan encouraged. She turned to them all. “He does. He knows a screaming story about a nigger who—but he’s got to tell it himself.”
Pawley beamed and said in a jolly way, “Yes, what about it, Morgan? Time we heard your voice.”
Morgan looked sulky; but he had more respect for Pawley than all the rest of the staff and children put together. He told the story gloomily. It was about an Englishman who asked a coloured man (he used the term pointedly) to cut him a bunch of bananas. The coloured man couldn’t reach the bunch without the effort of stretching, so he cut down the whole banana plant. The Englishman told his friend about this, and added, “You see how lazy the coloured people are. Fancy cutting down a whole banana tree because he couldn’t be bothered to reach above his head!” The point of this story was the ignorance of the Englishman, since all Jamaicans knew that banana plants only yielded once and had to be cut down, anyhow. Pawley guffawed politely, although he must have heard the story several times before, and Mrs. Morgan giggled happily, and would have lost some more rum if she hadn’t already lowered the level by other means. Duffield looked condescendingly amused.
“Now it’s your turn again, Mr. Duffield,” Mrs. Morgan said. She had become the party’s entrepreneur.
Duffield allowed himself to be drawn, as though reluctantly, into another story from his repertoire. While he was telling it Pawley crept round on tiptoe, in an exaggerated effort not to interrupt, filling up glasses. When he came to Mrs. Morgan’s glass, Morgan tried to intervene, and there followed a three-cornered argument in pantomime and whispers. Duffield went on with his story, addressing himself to Douglas. At the end Mrs. Morgan went off into fits of laughter, although she had missed it all. Her glass had been refilled to the brim. Her pockmarked face was growing very red.
Duffield then addressed himself to Morgan. He said with humorous sarcasm:
“Well, Morgan, what’s the weather got in store for us?”
Morgan decided to ignore the sarcasm and answer the question. He did so sulkily.
“According to the radio there’s an area of low pressure south of Jamaica.” He was being purposely obscure.
“Still the same old Morgan!” Duffield said good-humouredly, as if he had just met Morgan for the first time in two months and had found him unchanged. “Always giving you a lecture instead of an answer.” He looked at the others for approval. He found it in Mrs. Morgan, who said gaily to her husband:
“Yes; tell us what you mean. We can’t all be as clever as you, you know. What is low pressure? It sounds very rude to me.”
Morgan said curtly, “It may be going to rain.”
His tone brought home to Mrs. Morgan that he was not in the same high spirits as herself. She hadn’t realized it before. But now her own spirits were too high to be daunted.
“You do sound cross,” she said. She appealed to the others, giggling. “Doesn’t he sound cross? You ought to be nice to Mr. Duffield. He’s being nice to you. Really nice. And he’s such a scream.” She looked at Duffield appreciatively.
Morgan was busy hoping that Pawley wouldn’t suspect his wife was drunk. The best way to avert suspicion was to look as though he hadn’t noticed it himself so he decided to treat her remarks seriously. He pulled himself up and said pompously:
“Sorry, Duffield. No intention of being offensive. Yes I’m afraid we may have a little rain. We may also get some high winds soon. But I’m hoping we can get through the season without much damage on the farm.”
“You’re always talking about your old farm!” Mrs. Morgan said.
Morgan ignored her.
“I lost half my grapefruit and orange-trees last year. You probably remember.”
Duffield felt his victory was now complete. He could afford to be magnanimous.
“I remember. Ruddy bad luck. Yes, I hope you don’t lose any more grapefruit. Fond of the stuff myself.”
“I expect to be growing the finest in Jamaica next year.” Morgan said, gratified.
The conversation became agricultural, and Pawley joined in. Presently Mrs. Morgan sighed and giggled regretfully.
“Oh dear, I wish I hadn’t started this. Why doesn’t someone say something funny again? I don’t think we have nearly enough fun up here, do you, Mr. Pawley?”
Morgan was embarrassed by this gambit, his wife’s condition was becoming dangerously revealing, and he got up. “We must be going,” he said. “It’s getting late.” He went over to Duffield and patted him on the shoulder. “Glad we’ve had this talk tonight. It makes things easier.” He said good night to Pawley, and then turned to his wife who was still comfortably settled in her chair with half a glass of rum. “We must be going,” he said.
“I’m enjoying myself,” Mrs. Morgan giggled. “I don’t want to go yet.”
An ugly domestic scene might have followed if Pawley hadn’t stepped in with some questionable diplomacy.
“That’s all right, Morgan,” he said. He was still in a party mood, and delighted that at least one reconciliation had been successfully engineered. “It’s Saturday night you know. We’ll see your wife home if you want to go off.”
Morgan never argued with Pawley, so he went off, wearing the sort of expression that people wear when they carry unexploded bombs. Mr. Morgan then made Duffield tell another joke, which Pawley follow with a modest little anecdote about an American mistaking the National Gallery for St. Paul’s. Mrs. Morgan had never heard of either and presumably missed the point, but she accorded Pawley the appreciation due to his position. After this Douglas said good night. He saw no reason for staying to face the consequences of Pawley’s diplomatic blunder. He returned to his bungalow.
He read for a time, and it must have been an hour later, when he was on the point of going to bed, that Morgan appeared in the doorway. His face was a uniform grey.
“My wife’s with Duffield,” he said unsteadily.
“Where?”
“At his bungalow.”
Douglas didn’t know whether he wanted sympathy or help.
“You’d better go and get her,” he said.
“I can’t go by myself. You’ll have to come with me.”
“Are they in the bungalow?” Douglas said.
“No, they’re on the verandah. They’re drinking. I went down and saw them.”
Douglas went because he couldn’t persuade Morgan to go alone and he could foresee all kinds of frightful consequences if Mrs. Morgan passed out in Duffield’s bungalow, which she was sure to do. They found her bulging over the sides of a narrow deck-chair, giggling hysterically and with her hair wildly disarranged. Douglas explained to Duffield the importance of getting her home. Duffield was also very drunk, but raised no objection. Douglas and Morgan hoisted Mrs. Morgan out of the chair. As soon as they had put her on her feet, she fell forward with her arms round Duffield’s neck.
“You’re a dear, Mr. Duffield. You really are, you’re a dear.”
&nb
sp; They dragged her away, screaming with laughter. On the way back to the Great House she more or less passed out, which enabled them to make their entrance without waking the children, although it increased the difficulty of getting her upstairs.
In the morning Duffield was at breakfast on time. He said to Douglas:
“You must have had a job with that woman last night. Couldn’t stop her coming to my bungalow, you know. But she’s not a bad sort. It’s hard lines on her, being tied to a man like Morgan.”
Presently Morgan arrived. He said good morning to Douglas and ignored Duffield.
“I’m afraid my wife’s not very well this morning,” he explained. “She’s skipping breakfast.”
Mrs. Morgan also skipped lunch, but she put in an appearance at supper, when she was very subdued and carefully avoided Duffield’s eyes. The feud was on again. It looked as though there was every chance of it outliving the term.
At the beginning of the following week there was a disturbing incident—more disturbing to Douglas than any staff feud.
On Monday morning, when he went down to his bungalow before lunch, the wooden elephant had vanished. This puzzled him, but he did nothing about it until Tuesday morning, when he had an opportunity to question Ivy. Ivy giggled and said that it had been there at ten o’clock on Monday when she had dusted the room and made the bed. He then forgot about it until one of his classes in the afternoon.
In the class they happened to be talking about the fauna of Jamaica, and the reason for the island lacking the larger beasts of other tropical lands. One of the children mentioned elephants, which reminded him of his wooden mascot. He asked if any of them could account for its disappearance.
There was silence—the sort of silence that signified some knowledge shared by them all. He repeated the question, but as no one was willing to speak he dropped the matter until after the class. Then he called over Rosemary, who was the only one of his own pupils present, and asked her to explain. He had to use some persuasion. Then she said reluctantly:
The Shadow and the Peak Page 20
